


hope is the thing with feathers

by alpacamybags



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Castiel is Jack Kline's Parent, Episode: s15e19 Inherit the Earth, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hurt No Comfort, Jack Kline Needs A Hug, Slight Canon Divergence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-09
Updated: 2021-03-09
Packaged: 2021-03-15 15:47:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,427
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29935698
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alpacamybags/pseuds/alpacamybags
Summary: What if Jack had heard the phone call where Lucifer pretended to be Cas?
Relationships: Castiel & Jack Kline
Comments: 18
Kudos: 37





	hope is the thing with feathers

**Author's Note:**

> I am so very sorry about this one, but I do hope it's at least a little bit emotionally devastating.
> 
> Title from the the Emily Dickinson poem of the same name.

The bunker felt empty. Or maybe it was just Jack that felt that way.

Not empty in the sense that he couldn’t feel anything, and certainly not Empty like the place ( _don’t think about that right now, Jack_ )- it just felt like something was missing. And he knew exactly who it was, but he refused to think about it. 

It didn’t feel real. It was too easy to pretend that Cas was just off looking for some information, maybe talking to other angels, and that he’d be back soon. He did that a lot. It wasn’t too hard to close his eyes and live in a world where Cas was just off looking for some artifact, some tool they could use to defeat Chuck and restore the world. A world where he wasn’t gone.

It was like everything was a little bit blurred around the edges, like Jack was looking through a fog. Dean had met up with him and Sam, and Jack had felt something in his heart drop when he saw Cas wasn’t in the passenger seat. 

Almost as if he knew.

He’d waited for Dean to say something, say that Cas had stayed at the bunker or had taken another car to go somewhere else, maybe to see if the angels had been taken like the people were, but Dean hadn’t said anything.

And silence truly is deafening.

But it was the sun hitting the dried blood on Dean’s jacket, blood that couldn’t possibly be his own by the angle of it, that twisted the last of his doubts away. It was the final nail in the coffin, so to speak ( _and oh, wasn’t that a bit too painfully familiar_ ).

“Where’s Cas?” he’d asked, knowing the answer but hoping so desperately for something else.

Hope. Hope was just a single thread, stringing together lonely hearts. It could be frayed and torn and burned and unwoven, but it could survive a whole lot. He could feel his mother’s hope every day, and tried to live up to it. Mary had never given up hope while they were in Apocalypse World. Cas had never given up hope that they’d be able to fix Jack’s soul, and Sam and Dean hoped in their own way that they’d defeat Chuck and get their freedom. Hope was hope, even if Jack didn’t always understand it. 

He was beginning to think that hope was most like a snake. Terrifying and oddly beautiful, but with a bite that can kill. And if it doesn’t kill you, the sting alone can break you.

“Cas is gone,” he’d been told. And the proof was there- the blood, the words, the conspicuous absence, because even if Cas went off on his own sometimes his timing was never this bad, and he wouldn’t just _leave_ him, not now- but Jack couldn’t believe it. Didn’t want to believe it. Because if he did…

He couldn’t, so hope and denial and sorrow and anger and grief picked up their blades and went to war in his heart.

\---------

Hope was losing. Not dead, not yet, but losing, slowly and surely. 

“Cas?” A prayer, uttered while he felt utterly alone. 

He couldn’t beg him out of the Empty again. Of course not. Not with Chuck locking down on life and death, probably zeroed in on them by now. Not when the Shadow hated them both as much as it did. Not with his powers on the fritz and anger slowly but surely hacking away at despair and guilt and yes, hope, too. Loneliness stood to the side ( _like crying outside by a potted plant, can’t let them see I don’t know why but I can’t let them see_ ), and anger burned. 

Exhaustion soon doused the flame.

\---------

Now, in their empty bunker in their empty, dying little world, while their missing piece was lost to the Empty- now some of that space was taken up by Michael. Not the one Jack had spent half of his life fighting and burned off his soul to kill, but the thrum of his grace was similar enough and angry enough ( _so dissimilar from the grace he longed to sense nearby again_ ) that Jack followed Sam and Dean to the kitchen instead of staying with his uncle.

The war inside him was on pause as they made their real-world battle plans. Because wasn’t that always the way?

Sam and Dean didn’t look as desolate as he felt. Maybe they were better at hoping, maybe they were better at talking themselves in circles and dodging reality. ( _Maybe they just don’t care- never needed absolution, always needed to give some contribution_ ).

He’d just tossed the wrapper from his snack into the trash when a phone rang. 

It took them all a moment to remember that a ringing phone was wrong, now, because there was no one left to call them. Dean scrambled for the phone in his pocket, sending an unreadable glance in Sam’s direction at the sight of the caller ID.

“Cas?” Dean said, and then the world was spinning too fast. Jack’s muscles tensed up, fingers tightening on the edge of the counter. That couldn’t be… he must have misheard. Must be making things up.

He wasn’t. 

“Dean,” said that voice, the voice that Jack had quickly learned wasn’t normal by human standards but was always good to hear. That voice was part of home. That voice said _I love you_ and _you’ve got me_ and _because you’re you_. That voice was safety, and love, and trust. 

“I’m- I’m hurt. Can you let me in?”

Sam and Dean were exchanging looks, standing, the phone still in Dean’s hand, but Jack went running. He sprinted right past them and into the hallway, only vaguely registering the echoes of their feet on the floor behind him. Hope rode valiantly now, sword raised high. He was soaring up the stairs, two and then three at a time, blood and grace buzzing in his ears. 

He wanted to throw his arms around Castiel and never let go. He wanted to scream at him because _how could you leave me_. He wanted to cry from relief and sorrow and loss. Most of all he just wanted a hand to squeeze his shoulder and that voice to say “it’s going to be okay.” And things were always at their most okay when they were all together.

Jack reached the top of the stairs, heart pounding and breathing shallow, and threw open the door.

No. ( _Wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Wrong father, father-but-not-father, it wasn’t real at all no no_ please-)

An arm reached past him and promptly slammed the door in Lucifer’s face. That was Dean, having made it up the stairs just behind him. He pressed the door further shut with his body, eyes wide as he looked from Jack to Sam. 

Jack stumbled back, feeling like he’d been drained of everything. The only thing stopping him from tumbling backwards down the stairs, his legs having gone to jelly, was Sam’s fingers in a vice grip on his arm. Sam’s whole body was tense, his jaw clenched. 

“Was that-” Sam started, eyes fixed on a point over Dean’s shoulder. Where Lucifer still stood behind the metal.

Jack felt sick. With one flap of his wings he was back in his room, sagging against the back of his closed door and sliding down it until he hit the ground. The breath he took sounded shaky and shallow, reverberating around the room. 

He blinked, and a tear fell to the floor with a dull and lifeless _thwap_ , barely even loud enough to be heard. More came, flowing fast and silent from his eyes. There was nothing he could do to stop it.

Hope lay dead inside him, stabbed through the heart with a jagged-edged knife. Hope may be one of the strongest things in the universe, but when it was brutally ripped away- well. Nothing could ever really be a balm to that. 

Eventually he heard raised voices from the war room, and knew he had to go back. Hope had been a waste of time. Cas was gone. And he’d want them to save the world. 

He stood, wiping the last of his tears away. No time left to cry. ( _I am not a child!_ )

He opened the door, joining the fight again awash with something new: determination. Freshly melded out of raw brokenness, but no less powerful. He was going to fight Chuck, and do whatever it took to alleviate some of this pervasive emptiness.

He was going to win.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! I would love to know what you thought. Comments are very much appreciated <3


End file.
